Biotechnology Integration Opportunities for Teacher Education and Content (BIOTEC) at Northern Arizona University currently has five teachers and five fellows working together, teaching, developing biotechnology lessons and bringing science to life in 7^th and 9^th grade classrooms in Northern Arizona. The use of biotechnology as a core theme provides the students a means in which to explore life science in a new and exciting way. 

BIOTEC began in July of 2008 with a two week institute where the teacher and fellow pairs began the difficult task of designing lessons that allowed for the integration of the fellow’s research into the teachers’ Arizona science standards based curricula. During this time the teachers were able to work with the fellows in their research labs.  The culminating event for year one will be a three day institute at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix, Arizona. At TGen the fellows and teachers will shadow a high school intern who is conducting genetics research and participate in activities addressing Bioinformatics, ethics issues, and the bioscience industry in Arizona. 

In the second year, BIOTEC will have an expanded group with 8 fellows and 10 teachers. The unique aspect of years 2-5 will be the inclusion of underrepresented students from Navajo Reservations schools located in Pinon and Ganado unified school districts. The teachers from these schools will be partnered with a Flagstaff teacher and graduate fellow using their co-planned lessons from the July 2009 institute.   They will communicate using real time electronic media to broadcast to the reservation schools providing a shared experience in the science classroom.

An exciting part of our project has been the diverse backgrounds of our fellows. Their research areas range from soil and plant ecology, to muscle physiology, and pathogen microbiology.  This broad range of disciplines has lead to a varied array of biotechnology integration into lessons. Thus the lesson plan sharing occurring among the fellows provides a rich perspective on the myriad of ways to teach similar topics.

Benefits to teachers have included a greater degree of networking with teachers in different schools and in some cases different districts, with sharing equipment and exchanging teaching ideas within their life science curricula.

Students are benefiting from learning in a more inquiry based environment with the use of biotechnology and the incorporation of the fellow’s research into lessons on ecology, nature of science, and genetics to name a few.

The fellow’s teaching has been improving on an almost daily basis as they continue to learn and implement various teaching strategies.  The mentor role of the teachers is readily apparent as the fellow’s are continuing to move away from the lecture format they are accustomed to and are incorporating greater amounts of student centered learning experiences.